Science Musings Blog

Thursday, December 02, 2004

Jupiter's moons -- Part 3

Here is a re-creation of Galileo's view of Jupiter. This is what he would have seen on the evening of January 7th, 1610.Jupiter and Uranus are about 2.5 degrees separated in the sky--about two fingers width held at arms length. The small circle is the approximate field of view of Galileo's first telescope. I think we can forgive Galileo not spotting the undiscovered Uranus. What he saw through his eyepiece, moons orbiting another celestial body, was the discovery of a lifetime and literally an earth-moving event.